


Survivor

by coffee_mage



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: A thousand years of Kree-Xandarian war is especially ugly, Abortion, All ain't pretty in the Xandarian empire, Child Death, Collateral damage is a thing, Cultural genocide, F/M, Falling In Love, Independence, Infant Death, Murder, Murder of paedophiles, Not fetishized underage, Origin Story, Orphan Character, Refugee Camps, Stakar/Aleta/Yondu/Kraglin OT4-verse origin story, Stillbirth, Teen Pregnancy, The 99th, Underage Prostitution, childhood poverty, from zero to badass in under 2 decades, scenes in a life, vignettes to make a life, war isn't pretty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 22:31:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11884191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_mage/pseuds/coffee_mage
Summary: Aleta's birth was just one more bit of collateral damage in the Kree-Xandarian war.  She grew up knowing everything and everyone dies.Just not Aleta.





	Survivor

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags. I would like it noted that this does *not* fetishize underage sex or underage prostitution. They're tools used by a character for survival. The fic also contains a back alley abortion and the stillbirth of a child.

The tent has a hole in it and the dust blows through in the cold night air as the first child slips silently from the womb.  Her skin is hard and pale.  Her eyelids don't flicker, her mouth doesn't open and she never takes a breath.  Her grandmother tries frantically to clear her nose and mouth, to give her a chance.  Before the old woman has given it up as a lost cause--but after she's determined it is one--the second child comes hurtling into the world, shrieking loudly enough for her and her sister.  Her grandmother is so startled by the sudden arrival that she clings to the body of the first twin for almost a full tick before setting it down to pick up the screaming infant and present her to her mother.

"Aleta," she says, an archaic word from their tongue.  

The mother looks up from the baby already shrieking into her chest.  "What does that mean?"  Their people have spoken Xandarian for almost a hundred years now, ever since the Kree-Xandarian war destroyed so much of their planet that they were relocated to a 'cultural protection' camp.  Their culture wasn't 'protected' so much as it was annihilated and no one of the mother's generation speaks the old language.  The grandmother's generation were the last to speak it, will be the last to hold to the old ways.  The refugee camps aren't kind to those who don't adapt.

"Survivor," the grandmother says, sweeping some of the birthing fluid from the baby's cheek with a damp cloth.  

The mother looks over at the naked, cooling body at the foot of the small pallet and sets her jaw.  She loved them both from the moment that she found out that they'd be hers, but the first twin is gone and there is nothing they can do.  They know how loss works.  They've lost everything, time and again and this is no different.  The world comes crashing down and they build it up, rebuild, move on.  There will be time enough in the morning to mourn the passing of a small life that never properly happened, but for now she will celebrate that this child, the one already alternating the shrieking with suckling at her breast, has survived the difficult passage into life.

"It's going to be a good name," the mother says quietly.

"It's not a name."

"It is now."

 

 

 

The camp's records are terrible and even determining what day of the month it is can be difficult.  Aleta isn't sure how old she is when the plague comes.  She's not even sure what the plague is.  No one is.  The Xandarians say that they're sending in doctors and vaccines, but they've been saying that for months.  The holos claim that the medicine has already been delivered, though, so Aleta's pretty sure they're not coming.  

She's been pretty sure for years now that the Xandarians are lying scumbags and that if the Kree kill every last one of them, it's honestly not going to be any great loss to the universe.  They do whatever they want and damn the consequences to anyone who's in their way.  She knows that her people were in the way of the fighting and that's why they're just Xandarians with weird biology now.

At least, the survivors are.  Her grandmother, mother and four sisters aren't part of that group.  She's wrapped each of them in cloth and dragged her sisters out into the icy desert.  She's shoved mounds of sand over them so they're as safe as they can be from the predators that come out when things get quiet.  She's not big enough to move her mother or grandmother.  None of the survivors are.  For some reason, the plague has spared a handful of children her age and she doesn't know why.

She doesn't know why she's alive and her little sisters are dead.  She doesn't know why the Xandarians take her clothes and her keepsakes and even the earrings from her ears.  She doesn't know why they spray her down in the freezing orange liquid.  She doesn't know why they shave her head.

They at least explain to her why they're taking her and the other survivors to new camps--there aren't enough adults left to care for them, now.  It would cost too much to keep them in the only home they've ever known.  There would be no one to prepare the food or even receive the deliveries they get from the Xandarians.  

The last time she sees any of the children she's grown up with, she's being forcibly carried away from them into a new camp--they're to be divided.  Something about the gene pool.  She's not sure what that is, but she hates swimming, always has.

 

 

 

Food is, if anything, harder to come by in her second camp than it was in her first camp.  She's learned from all the mixed up, weird looking people that their camp is on an inhabited planet, at least.  They all want to know why it means there's less food than their old camps, but she thinks she knows.  She's smarter, she's discovered, than anyone expects.

The food is scarce, she believes, because it's cheaper to let the refugees trickle one by one from the gates of the camp, towards the inhabited regions.  Every mouth that heads out to find an independent life in parts unknown among people who don't want them, that's one less unwanted mouth for the Nova Corps to feed.  

She's spindly, growing fast,  more legs than child anymore.  She sees a small group of the other children escaping the orphanage through the back door in the night and she goes with them.  The fire that sweeps through the camp that night is arson, the local rumour mills say.  According to the holos, it's just a tragic accident.  Four hundred refugees die.  Aleta is not among them.  She's learning to beg for food behind a restaurant that stinks of things she's pretty sure she's not going to like.

She's right that she hates it, but it's also more food than she's ever had before in her life.  She eats herself sick on it, then goes back to the giant container for seconds, then thirds.  It feels like being rich and then it's survival when she realizes she's alive and the others aren't.

 

 

 

All the food is finally making her fill out and she no longer looks like a child, but she doesn't look like an adult, either.  One of the other girls grabs her by the arm and drags her down an alley.  There's a better way than begging.  She can make enough units to get off the streets, to pay for a waterproof roof and a heater and even a cooler for the hot, muggy days.  All she has to do is get some new clothes and wander the streets.  

She still needs to beg, but when the Nova soldiers take her for a meal, she needs to crawl into their laps to eat her food.  She needs to squirm just right and if she feels him 'rise up' as the girl puts it, she needs to tell him she's never seen a naked man before and offer to let him see her naked in return.  If he says yes, she charges him units for the privilege.  If he keeps saying yes, rack up the units and never let him know she's done it a dozen times before.  It's always the first time.  Always.

It hurts, at first, before she learns to oil herself up before she goes hunting.  She never gets to where she likes it, but it works.  A couple hours' walking every day keeps her in nice clothes and a safe place to sleep.  She's never been so happy.  

Then, one of the damn Nova assholes beats her while he pumps into her.  It's terrifying and painful.  She can feel bones cracking while he shoves in.  He likes it.  He seems to get off on it and he encourages her to scream.  She does.

He transfers extra units when he leaves her in a huddled heap on the floor.  She coughs and her hand is spattered orange with blood.  It makes her hearts pound in her ears and every inch towards the door is hard-won.  Someone finds her in the street and they carry her off to a medical centre.  It wipes out every unit she has.  In the two weeks she spends being cared for, she loses the place she's been sleeping, all her nice clothes, her bed.  It's all gone.  But she's not.  She's alive and she remembers her mother and grandmother rebuilding.  She can do it, too.

 

 

 

She tries begging again, remembers the cautionary tale she'd learnt first-hand, but she's used to a soft bed now.  She can't go back to the nooks and corners of the hard streets.  She holds off until the bruising is gone, until the last of the pain fades from her bones, but then she can't wait anymore.  The faces of the Xandarian scum blur together and she wants to kill every last one of them.  

She finds a new room to rent, buys new clothes, luxuriates in the food and stabs the next asshole who thinks hitting her while he fucks her is a good plan.  She watches the blood gurgle from his throat and wipes the knife on the edge of his uniform.  It doesn't even make the holos.  It turns out, no one cares about a dead Nova who got killed by a hooker.

She didn't get paid, though, so she can't make a habit of killing Nova dickbags.  But she kills another, then another.  It feels good, every time.  She takes a short break from both fucking and killing after she's killed one for her mother, one for her grandmother and one for every one of her seven sisters.  It feels good and she lays in bed for hours, remembering the warm rush of blood over her hands.

 

 

 

She misses it, at first.  She assumes the thickening in her middle is just a matter of all the extra food she's been eating.  She was bound to get fat eventually, right?  She assumes that the swelling of her breasts is just part of becoming an adult--soon she won't be able to play coquettish child virgin any longer.  The fluttering in her belly terrifies her, though.  She's seen what parasites can do.  She's seen how they ravage a body and destroy a person from the inside out.  

She also remembers what the medical centre did to her finances and she's not going back.  She can't.  She'll go to one of the hole in the wall, unlicensed places and take her chances before she ends up broke and back on the streets.  They're harder to find and she has to ask a few people, one after another, before the whisper network gets her to one who doesn't sound like she'll just steal her organs and leave her to die.

The diagnosis terrifies her more than anything she's ever heard before.  It's everything she doesn't want, everything she doesn't need.  She's seen the dead-eyed girls leaving their brats behind to scream while they go make the money.  She knows that every time her mother thought maybe she could afford to book passage on a ship and get them out of the damn camp, she'd accept a night of comfort from one of the men who lived in the neighbouring tents and then her face would go tight and drawn and there'd be another sister (or there wouldn't, but she tries not to think of that).

She wants it out of her.  Immediately.  This isn't in her cards, it's not in her future and it's not happening.  She's not tolerating this.

There's no anaesthetic--the unlicensed woman doesn't have enough information on her biology to give her anything safe and Aleta's there because this one has ethics--so there's just pain and a rush of fluids.  Then there's more pain, tearing her apart from the inside while she struggles to stay absolutely still.  Aleta won't leave the damn thing inside of her and the unlicensed woman told her that if every bit of it wasn't out of her, she'd end up sick.

Despite all best efforts, days later there's a fever burning through her and her mouth is so dry she can't swallow.  She can't even lift her head, let alone move her arms and legs.  Her belly hurts, bad.  She's thrown up again and again and her floor is crusted with it.  She's dying.  She knows she's dying.  She closes her eyes and lets death take her.

But then she opens them again.  It's been some time.  She can tell.  The sky outside is dark and heavy with rain clouds that weren't in the forecast for days.  She's weak.  She trembles.  It takes everything she has to move and go to the water tap in the corner.  She has to lay there for what she thinks might be hours before she's able to gather the strength to turn the knob.  She pushes her whole face under the water and she drinks.  

The water steels her.  After awhile, she can stand, shakily, and she manages to consume some of the food she has stashed away.  She has enough savings to keep the room until she can work again.  She'll always work again.

 

 

 

She should have looked at the rank insignia.  She should have.  She knows better.  She knows there's a certain rank of Nova scum she needs to stay away from because she can't kill them if things go wrong.  She's been shown what those insignia look like.  But bars are darker than the cafes where she used to seduce the pedophiles and she hadn't seen.  She should have made a point of it, but she didn't and he was offering so much damn money.  She wouldn't have had to let anyone pump into her for weeks.

She'd only noticed the rank insignia when she wiped off the knife, her hearts pounding and her ears ringing with victory.  This wasn't a Corpsman or a Millennian.  This was a Denarian and one who appeared, judging from the little blip thing next to his regular insignia, to be on his way to a promotion ceremony.  She'd been a celebration, then and that meant she was in big trouble.

She ran out the door.  She kept running.  She didn't stop until she was safely in her room and then she flipped on the holo to see.  She needed to know.  Maybe he wouldn't be missed. Maybe the Xandarians had hated him. Maybe.  Maybe.  But then there her face was on the fucking holo.  There was the bounty, more units than she'd ever seen.  They had a list of every fucking Nova bastard she'd killed and they were talking about how most of them, judging from something called the telomere length of her DNA, she'd been underage but they were sure now that she was an adult and she was to be considered armed and very dangerous.

The bounty can be collected whether she's brought in dead or alive.  She needs to get off the damn planet, and fast.  If she doesn't, they're going to kill her.  No one's going to bother bringing her in alive if they can get a bounty for a limp body just as easy.  

She puts on a scarf, covers as much of her face as she dares without looking suspicious, packs a light bag and runs down to the docks.  There's got to be someone who'll take her off-planet without turning her in.  She tries to act casual and it’s one of the hardest things she’s ever done.  Her hearts are pounding in her ears.  She can taste fear, sickly and sweet in the back of her throat.  

There's a ship that's being given a wide berth by almost everyone else.  People are looking at it in fear.

It's the one hope she has--that they're too evil to turn her in.  She knows evil and she can work with it.  She marches up to the ship and taps the person pushing a lift up the ramp on the shoulder.  "Excuse me, who would I speak to about booking passage on your vessel?"

"Not taking passengers, but we got a few spots open for crew.  You ever even been on a ship before?"

She'd been small, still, young and mourning her family.  She barely remembered it, but she'd been there.  She straightened her spine.  "Of course."

The person huffs a little laugh, like she doesn't believe Aleta.  "You know what we are, right honey?"

"Of course."

An eyeroll.  "We're Ravagers.  We ain't where you take your teenage rebellion, girlie.  We kill and we Ravage and we steal and we leave a path of destruction in our wake."  

A smile, something unfamiliar and somehow warm, spreads across Aleta's face.  It feels like coming home.  "My name is Aleta.  I'm wanted for the murders of 27 Nova bastards.  Get me off this planet and I'll kill anyone you want."

 

 

 

Aleta's smarter than anyone gave her credit for, ever.  She picks up piloting just from watching other people pilot M-Ships.  Before a full standard cycle is over, she's volunteered for piloting duties and when they test her to make sure she knows what she's doing, she surprises even herself with her scoring.  She's good.  She's shocked to be as good as she is just from watching and once she's actually had some practice, she rapidly becomes one of the best pilots they have.  

She can fly into places half the fleet looks at in terror and she comes out unscathed, every damn time.  She's wanted by Nova for impossible thefts and she even steals from the Kree.  In, out and gone in less time than it takes them to figure out she's shown up.  She's like a ghost and it's amazing.  She's never found anything so perfect.

She's in love for the first time in her life and it's making her a killing.  She comes out on top in dog fight after dog fight and wins them all.  She defends galleons and M-Ships alike and she saves up to get a tiny, one-man fighter for times when an M-Ship is just too big.  She modifies her M-Ship so the back can hold her fighter, so she can deploy a tiny ship from a small ship.  It takes dozens of freighters by surprise.

It's worked so well so many times and she has a small crew who join her on the M-Ship so they can split away and she doesn't have to depend on an AI.  They're good for following her down into the paths she clears and there's no room on her fighter for cargo, so they're necessary.  

They're descending on a freighter.  She's taken out three of their shields so they'll be able to dock on it and she's sweeping back for the fourth pass, the one where she takes out their cockpit and half their thrusters when there's a scream over her comms.  Just one loud scream and then nothing.  By the time she turns, the M-Ship is in pieces.  There's no room on the fighter for other passengers.  There's only 90 seconds to save her crew.  

She witnesses them.  She remembers them.  She boards the fucking freighter and flies it back to the fleet for looting, killing every asshole on the ship in vengeance.

 

 

 

She meets a boy out here in space.  Another Ravager, one taller than her and broader than her and less interested in shoving his cock into her than most of them.  It's that last that makes her interested, but she's not going to tell him.  She doesn't want him to get the wrong idea, the idea that this might go somewhere.

Still, his attention is flattering and she enjoys his company, at least a little.  She lets him follow her around and his presence grows on her.  It might be starting to go somewhere, she's not sure.  She isn't sure how long she should let it go on before she should tell him to go away.  She doesn't want to get him killed, after all.  People who spend too long with her tend to die.

They're sent into a town together.  It's little more than a settlement and they're told to go in and kill everyone who might stop them from getting to an artifact worth millions on the black market.  Anyone might stop them, really, so she razes the town to the ground with her fighter before they go in.  There's fire and smoke and everything is black.  A few survivors scream in the flames and it makes her feel good.  

She likes when people die, just not this idiot.  This idiot is the one she doesn't want to die and it occurs to her that this is the perfect time to shove him away.  This is the perfect time to say to him that she's not interested.  This is when she should say that this relationship isn't going anywhere and that it's been doomed from the outset.

The artifact is on a raised pedestal, up over their heads and she's too damn short to reach it even stood up on his shoulders.  He insists that she try because his spatial sense is terrible, really.  It's no wonder he can barely pilot to save his life if he thinks that even stacked they can reach it.  It doesn't work, just like she told him it wouldn't.  

He insists on being a gentleman, though.  There are rocks, he thinks he can hop from one to the next, save her the work of climbing it--she's dressed far more practically and she knows she's more likely to be able to climb it than he is.  She lets him try and he scrambles up the first rock then starts hopping.  It goes well and she's actually a little impressed.  

He tries to skip a rock.  The first time, it goes fine and he grins down at her.  He preens a little when he sees that she saw him and then goes to do it again.  He's not so lucky this time, though.  The heel of his boot slips on the rock, maybe on a bit of moss, and he topples straight off the rock.

He's up higher than her head and she's sure this is it.  She survives, he doesn't.  He falls and falls and she remembers.  She kills in his memory just like she kills in the memory of so many others.  She kills because she enjoys it and eventually forgets that he's part of the reason why.  She goes on surviving and leaves a trail of death behind her.

He hits the surface of the pond with a gloopy plop.  It's gross and she closes her eyes a second, not wanting to look.  He's dead, she's sure.  It’s a certainty, not a possibility.  

There's nothing she can do.  There's never anything she can do.  Then she hears a splash that doesn't make any sense to her and a gasp of air and he starts making noise about how disgusting it is.  She hears him clamberout of the pond and she looks over at him and he's alive.

He's alive and he's complaining about how ugly and disgusting his uniform is now.  He's complaining about how much he hates being filthy.  He's complaining about what his life has become.  He's got some kind of viscous green scum slipping slowly down the side of his face and he looks completely ridiculous.  

He's alive and she laughs.  She laughs and she can't stop.  He tells her to stop laughing at him.  He says it's not fair.  He complains and he whines and he's disgusting.  She can't stop laughing even as she blows a kiss at him and runs away, leaving him sliding across the stone as he tries to catch her.  She can't stop laughing when he leaps at her like a child playing some kind of tag.  She can't stop laughing as he starts stripping his clothes off in disgust.  The layers of the uniform have protected his underclothes and, aside from his face and hands, he's actually mostly clean.  

She can't stop laughing as she uses the lining of his coat to wipe the scum from his face and kisses him.  She can't stop laughing as she climbs the rocks and gets the artifact.  She laughs the whole way back to the galleon.  She smiles at him in the hallways.  She finds new reasons to spend time with him.  She likes being with him.  

Aleta doesn't die and neither does he.


End file.
